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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 
























“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in?” 

Page 127. 


©CI.K 77906 






Copyright, 1914- 

By David McKay, Philadelphia, Pa. 


JUN 29 1914 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

^Tt’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come 

TO DINNER. Will you let me in?” Frontispiece 

FAaNG PAGE 

“Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas!”.. 6 

Scrooge sat down and wept to see his poor for- 
gotten SELF 40 

“I HAVE COME TO BRING YOU HOME, DEAR BROTHER!”.. 42 

Then Old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. 
Fezziwig 48 

“I RELEASE YOU, WITH A FULL HEART, FOR THE LOVE 

OF HIM YOU ONCE WERE” $2 

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim 76 

Scrooge’s niece played well upon the harp 86 

“Here’s the turkey. Hollo! Whoop! How are 
YOU? Merry Christmas!” 94 

“They are not torn down,” cried Scrooge, fold- 
ing ONE OF THE BED-CURTAINS IN HIS ARMS IO4 

‘^AnD therefore I AM ABOUT TO RAISE YOUR 

salary” 120 

Scrooge regarded every one with a delightful 

SMILE 124 


t, 


Stave One 
MARLEY’S GHOST 

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no 
doubt whatever about that. The register of his 
burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, 
the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge 
signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon 
’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. 

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. 

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of 
my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead 
about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, 
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece 
of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of 
our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed 
hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done 
for. You will therefore permit me to repeat 
emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door- 
nail. 




1 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. 
How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were 
partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge 
was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his 
sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, 
and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so 
dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he 
was an excellent man of business on the very day 
of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted 
bargain. 

The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me 
back to the point I started from. There is no 
doubt that Marley was dead. 

This must be distinctly understood, or nothing 
wonderful can come of the story I am going to 
relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that 
Hamlet’s father died before the play began, there 
would be nothing more remarkable in his taking 
a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his 
own ramparts, than there would be in any other 
middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after 
dark in a breezy spot — say St. Paul’s Churchyard 
for instance — literally to astonish his son’s weak 
mind. 

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. 
There it stood, years afterwards, above the ware- 
house door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was 
known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people 
new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and 
2 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. 
It was all the same to him. 

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the 
grindstone. Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, 
grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! 
Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had 
ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self- 
contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold 
within him froze his old features, nipped his 
pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his 
gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and 
spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A 
frosty rime was on his head, and on his eye- 
brows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own 
low temperature always about with him; he iced 
his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it 
one degree at Christmas. 

External heat and cold had little influence on 
Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry 
weather chill him. No wind that blew was 
bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent 
upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to 
entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to 
have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and 
hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage 
over him in only one respect. They often ‘‘came 
down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did. 

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, 
with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are 

3 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


you? When will you come to see me?” No 
beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no 
children asked him what it was o’clock, no man 
or woman ever once in all his life inquired the 
way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even 
the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and 
when they saw him coming on, would tug their 
owners into doorways and up courts; and then 
would wag their tails as though they said, ‘‘No 
eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!” 

But what did Scrooge care! It was the very 
thing he liked. To edge his way along the 
crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy 
to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones 
call “nuts” to Scrooge. 

Once upon a time — of all the good days in the 
year, on Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy in 
his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting 
weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the 
people in the court outside go wheezing up and 
down, beating their hands upon their breasts, 
and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones 
to warm them. The city clocks had only just 
gone three, but it was quite dark already — it had 
not been light all day — and candles were flaring 
in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like 
ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The 
fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, 
and was so dense without, that although the court 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were 
mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come 
drooping down, obscuring everything, one might 
have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was 
brewing on a large scale. 

The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open 
that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who, 
in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was 
copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, 
but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that 
it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish 
it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; 
and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, 
the master predicted that it would be necessary for 
them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his 
white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the 
candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong 
imagination, he failed. 

Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” 
cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of 
Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly 
that this was the first intimation he had of his 
approach. 

‘^Bah!” said Scrooge. ‘^Humbug!” 

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in 
the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he 
was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and hand- 
some; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked 
again. 


5 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


‘‘Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s 
nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?” 

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! 
What right have you to be merry? What 
reason have you to be merry? You’re poor 
enough.” 

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. 
“What right have you to be dismal? What 
reason have you to be morose? You’re rich 
enough.” 

Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the 
spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and 
followed it up with “Humbug.” 

“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew. 

“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, 
“when I live in such a world of fools as this? 
Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! 
What’s Christmas time to you but a time for 
paying bills without money; a time for finding 
yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a 
time for balancing your books and having every 
item in ’em through a round dozen of months 
presented dead against you? If I could work 
my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot 
who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his 
lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and 
buried with a stake of holly through his heart. 
He should!” 

“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew. 

6 



©DMSK 


Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas!’ 


Page 6. 


©CIK 77907 




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MARLEY’S GHOST 


‘‘Nephew!’’ returned the uncle sternly, “keep 
Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in 
mine.” 

“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But 
you don’t keep it.” 

“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. 
“Much good may it do you! Much good it has 
ever done you!” 

“There are many things from which I might 
have derived good, by which I have not profited, 
I dare say,” returned the nephew — “Christmas 
among the rest. But I am sure I have always 
thought of Christmas time, when it has come 
round — apart from the veneration due to its 
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging 
to it can be apart from that — as a good time; 
a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the 
only time I know of, in the long calendar of the 
year, when men and women seem by one con- 
sent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to 
think of people below them as if they really 
were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not 
another race of creatures bound on other jour- 
neys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never 
put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I 
believe that it has done me good, and will do 
me good; and I say, God bless it!” 

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. 
Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, 

7 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail 
spark for ever. 

‘‘Let me hear another sound from said 

Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by 
losing your situation! You’re quite a powerful 
speaker, sir,” he added, turning to his nephew. 
“I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.” 

“Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us 
to-morrow.” 

Scrooge said that he would see him Yes, 

indeed he did. He went the whole length of that 
expression, and said that he would see him in that 
extremity first. 

“But why?” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “Why?” 

“Why did you get married?” said Scrooge. 

“Because I fell in love.” 

“Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, 
as if that were the only one thing in the world 
more ridiculous than a Merry Christmas. “Good- 
afternoon!” 

“Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me 
before that happened. Why give it as a reason 
for not coming now?” 

“Good-afternoon,” said Scrooge. 

“I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of 
you; why cannot we be friends?” 

“Good-afternoon,” said Scrooge. 

“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so 
resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to 
8 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


which I have been a party. But I have made the 
.trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my 
Christmas humour to the last. So a Merry 
Christmas, uncle!” 

‘‘Good-afternoon!” said Scrooge. 

“And a happy New Year!” 

“Good-afternoon!” said Scrooge. 

His nephew left the room without an angry 
word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer 
door to bestow the greetings of the season on the 
clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than 
Scrooge; for he returned them cordially. 

“There’s another fellow,” muttered Scrooge, who 
overheard him; “my clerk, with fifteen shillings a 
week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry 
Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.” 

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had 
let two other people in. They were portly gentle- 
men, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their 
hats off, in Scrooge’s office. They had books and 
papers in their hands, and bowed to him. 

“Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one of 
the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I 
the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. 
Marley.?” 

“Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” 
Scrooge replied. “He died seven years ago, this 
very night.” 

“We have no doubt his liberality is well repre- 

9 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


sented by his surviving partner,” said the gentle- 
man, presenting his credentials. 

It certainly was ; for they had been two kindred 
spirits. At the ominous words ‘liberality,” Scrooge 
frowned, and shook his head, and handed the 
credentials back. 

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” 
said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more 
than usually desirable that we should make some 
slight provision for the poor and destitute, who 
suffer greatly at the present time. Many thou- 
sands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds 
of thousands are in want of common comforts, 
sir.” 

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. 

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying 
down the pen again. 

“And the union workhouses?” demanded 
Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?” 

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I 
wish I could say that they were not.” 

“The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full 
vigour, then?” said Scrooge. 

“Both very busy, sir.” 

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, 
that something had occurred to stop them in their 
useful course,” said Scrooge. “Pm very glad to 
hear it.” 

“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish 

10 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” 
returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeav- 
ouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat 
and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this 
time, because it is a time, of all others, when want 
is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. What shall 
I put you down for?” 

‘‘Nothing!”. Scrooge replied. 

“You wish to be anonymous?” 

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since 
you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my 
answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, 
and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I 
help to support the establishments I have men- 
tioned — they cost enough; and those who are 
badly off must go there.” 

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather 
die.” 

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they 
had better do it, and decrease the surplus popula- 
tion. Besides — excuse me — I don’t know that.” 

“But you might know it,” observed the gentle- 
man. 

“ It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “ It’s 
enough for a man to understand his own business, 
and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine 
occupies me constantly. Good-afternoon, gentle- 
men!” 

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue 

11 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge 
resumed his labours with an improved opinion of 
himself, and in a more facetious temper than was 
usual with him. 

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, 
that people ran about with, flaring links, proffering 
their services to go before horses in carriages and 
conduct them on their way. Th.e ancient tower of 
a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping 
slyly down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in 
the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours 
and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibra- 
tions afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in 
its frozen head up there. The cold became in- 
tense. In the main street, at the corner of the 
court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, 
and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round 
which a party of ragged men and boys were 
gathered warming their hands and winking their 
eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug 
being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly 
congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The 
brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and 
berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, 
made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers’ 
and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke — a 
glorious pageant, with which it was next to im- 
possible to believe that such dull principles as 
bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord 
12 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion 
House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers 
to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household 
should; and even the little tailor, whom he had 
fined five shillings on the previous Monday for 
being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred 
up to-morrow’s pudding in his garret while his 
lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the 
beef. 

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching^ 
biting cold. If the good St. Dunstan had but 
nipped the evil spirit’s nose with a touch of such 
weather as that, instead of using his familiar weap- 
ons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty 
purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, 
gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones 
are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s 
keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol; but 
at the first sound of — 

‘‘God bless you, merry gentleman! 

May nothing you dismay!” 

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of 
action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the 
keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost. 

At length the hour of shutting up the counting- 
house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted 
from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the 

13 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed 
his candle out, and put on his hat. 

‘‘You’ll want all day* to-morrow, I suppose?” 
said Scrooge. 

“If quite convenient, sir.” 

“It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “and it’s 
not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d 
think yourself ill-used. I’ll be bound?” 

The clerk smiled faintly. 

“And yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think me 
ill-used, when I pay a day’s wages for no work.” 

The clerk observed that it was only once a 
year. 

“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every 
twenty-fifth of December!” said Scrooge, button- 
ing his greatcoat to the chin. “But I suppose 
you must have the whole day. Be here all the 
earlier next morning.” 

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge 
walked out with a growl. The office was closed 
in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of 
his white comforter dangling below his waist (for 
he boasted no greatcoat), went down a slide on 
Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty 
times, in' honour of its being Christmas Eve, and 
then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he 
could pelt, to play at blind-man’s buff. 

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual 
melancholy tavern; and having read all the news- 
14 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


papers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with 
his banker’s book, went home to bed. He lived in 
chambers which had once belonged to his deceased 
partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in 
a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had 
so little business to be, that one could scarcely help 
fancying it must have run there when it was a 
young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other 
houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It 
was old enough now, and dreary enough, for 
nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms 
being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark 
that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was 
fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so 
hung about the black old gateway of the house, 
that it seemed as if the genius of the weather sat 
in mournful meditation on the threshold. 

Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all 
particular about the knocker on the door, except 
that it was very large. It is also a fact that 
Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during 
his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge 
had as little of what is called fancy about him as 
any man in the city of London, even including — 
which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, 
and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that 
Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, 
since his last mention of his seven-years dead 
partner that afternoon. And then let any man 

15 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


explain to me, if he can, how it happened that 
Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, 
saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any 
intermediate process of change — not a knocker, 
but Marley’s face. 

Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable 
shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but 
had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a 
dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but 
looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with 
ghostly spectacles turned up on his ghostly fore- 
head. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by 
breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide 
open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and 
its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror 
seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond 
its control, rather than a part of its own expression. 

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, 
it was a knocker again. 

To say that he was not startled, or that his 
blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to 
which it had been a stranger from infancy, would 
be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he 
had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and 
lighted his candle. 

He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, 
before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously 
behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified 
with the sight of Marley’s pigtail sticking out into 
16 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


the hall. But there was nothing on the back of 
the door, except the screws and nuts that held the 
knocker on, so he said, “Pooh, pooh!” and closed 
it with a bang. 

The sound resounded through the house like 
thunder. Every room above, and every cask in 
the wine-merchant’s cellars below, appeared to 
have a separate peal of echoes of its own. 
Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. 
He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, 
and up the stairs; slowly, too; trimming his candle 
as he went. 

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach- 
and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a 
bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say 
you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and 
taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards 
the wall and the door towards the balustrades; and 
done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, 
and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason 
why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse 
going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen 
gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted 
the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was 
pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip. 

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. 
Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But 
before he shut his heavy door, he walked through 
his rooms to see that all was right. He had just 

17 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

enough recollection of the face to desire to do 
that. 

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as 
they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody 
under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and 
basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel 
(Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. 
Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; 
nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging 
up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. 
Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, 
two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and 
a poker. 

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked 
himself in — double-locked himself in, which was 
not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he 
took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and 
slippers, and his night-cap; and sat down before 
the fire to take his gruel. 

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such 
a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, 
and brood over it, before he could extract the 
least sensation of warmth from such a handful of 
fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some 
Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round 
with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the 
Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s 
daughters. Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers 
descending through the air on clouds like feather- 
18 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off 
to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to 
attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, 
seven years dead, came like the ancient pro- 
phet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each 
smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power 
to shape some picture on its surface from the 
disjointed fragment of his thoughts, there would 
have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every 
one. 

‘‘Humbug!” said Scrooge; and walked across 
the room. 

After several turns, he sat down again. As he 
threw his head back in the chair, his glance 
happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that 
hung in the room, and communicated, for some 
purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the 
highest storey of the building. It was with great 
astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable 
dread, that as he looked he saw this bell begin to 
swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it 
scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out 
loudly, and so did every bell in the house. 

This might have lasted half a minute, or a 
minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased 
as they had begun, together. They were succeeded 
by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some 
person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks 
in the wine-merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then 

19 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted 
houses were described as dragging chains. 

The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, 
and then he heard the noise much louder, on the 
floors below; then coming up the stairs; then 
coming straight towards his door. 

‘‘It’s humbug still!” said Scrooge. “I won’t 
believe it.” 

His colour changed, though, when, without a 
pause, it came on through the heavy door, and 
passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its 
coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though 
it cried, “I know him! Marley’s ghost!” and fell 
again. 

The same face: the very same. Marley in his 
pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the 
tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and 
his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The 
chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It 
was long, and wound about him like a tail; audit 
was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash- 
boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy 
purses wrought in steel. His body was trans- 
parent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and look- 
ing through his waistcoat, could see the two 
buttons on his coat behind. 

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley 
had no bowels, but he had never believed it until 

20 


now. 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he 
looked the phantom through and through, and saw 
it standing before him; though he felt the chilling 
influence of its death-cold eyes: and marked the 
very texture of the folded kerchief bound about 
his head and chin, which wrapper he had not 
observed before; he was still incredulous, and 
fought against his senses. 

“How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as 
ever. “What do you want with me?” 

“Much!” — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it. 

“Who are you?” 

“Ask me who I zvas,’^^ 

“Who were you then?” said Scrooge, raising 
his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.” He 
was going to say a shade,” but substituted this, 
as more appropriate. 

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.” 

“Can you — can you sit down?” asked Scrooge, 
looking doubtfully at him. 

“I can.” 

“Do it, then.” 

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t 
know whether a ghost so transparent might And 
himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt 
that in the event of its being impossible, it might 
involve the necessity of an embarrassing explana- 
tion. But the ghost sat down on the opposite 
side of the flreplace, as if he were quite used to it. 

21 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


^‘You don’t believe in me,” observed the ghost, 
don’t,” said Scrooge. 

“What evidence would you have of my reality 
beyond that of your senses?” 

“ I don’t know,” said Scrooge. 

“Why do you doubt your senses?” 

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects 
them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes 
them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of 
beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a frag- 
ment of an underdone potato. There’s more of 
gravy than of grave about you, whatever you 
are!” 

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking 
jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means 
waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be 
smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, 
and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s 
voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones. 

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in 
silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the 
very deuce with him. There was something very 
awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with an 
infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could 
not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; 
for though the ghost sat perfectly motionless, its 
hair, its skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by 
the hot vapour from an oven. 

“You see this toothpick?” said Scrooge, return- 

22 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


ing quickly to the charge, for the reason just 
assigned; and wishing, though it were only for 
a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from 
himself. 

‘‘I do,” replied the ghost. 

‘‘You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge. 

“But I see it,” said the ghost, “notwithstand- 
ing.” 

“Well!” returned Scrooge, “I have but to 
swallow this, and be for the rest of my days per- 
secuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own 
creation. Humbug, I tell you — humbug!” 

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and 
shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling 
noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to 
save himself from falling in a swoon. But how 
much greater was his horror, when the phantom 
taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were 
too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped 
down upon its breast! 

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his 
hand before his face. 

“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why 
do you trouble me?” 

“Man of the worldly mind,” replied the ghost, 
“do you believe in me or not?” 

“I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why 
do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come 
to me?” 


23 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


‘Ht is required of every man,” the ghost re- 
turned, ‘Hhat the spirit within him should walk 
abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and 
wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is 
condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to 
wander through the world — oh, woe is me! — and 
witness what it cannot share, but might have 
shared on earth, and turned to happiness!” 

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its 
chain and wrung its shadowy hands. 

‘‘You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. 
“Tell me why!” 

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the 
ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; 
I girded it on of my own free will, and of my 
own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to 

Scrooge trembled more and more. 

“Or would you know,” pursued the ghost, “the 
weight and length of the strong coil you bear 
yourself? It was full as heavy and long as this, 
seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on 
it, since. It is a ponderous chain!” 

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the 
expectation of finding himself surrounded by some 
fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could 
see nothing. 

“Jacob,” he said imploringly. “Old Jacob Mar- 
ley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!” 
24 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


‘H have none to give,” the ghost replied. ‘Ht 
comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and 
is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of 
men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very 
little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, 
I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My 
spirit never walked beyond our counting-house — 
mark me! — in life my spirit never roved beyond 
the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and 
weary journeys lie before me!” 

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he be- 
came thoughtful, to put his hand in his breeches 
pockets. Pondering on what the ghost had said, 
he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or 
getting off his knees. 

‘^You must have been very slow about it, 
Jacob,” Scrooge observed, in a business-like man- 
ner, though with humility and deference. 

‘‘Slow!” the ghost repeated. 

“Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And 
travelling all the time?” 

“The whole time,” said the ghost. “No rest, 
no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.” 

“You travel fast?” said Scrooge. 

“On the wings of the wind,” replied the ghost. 

“You might have got over a great quantity of 
ground in seven years,” said Scrooge. 

The ghost, on hearing this set up another cry, 
and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead 

25 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


of the night, that the ward would have been 
justified in indicting it for a nuisance. 

‘‘Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” 
cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of 
incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this 
earth must pass into eternity before the good of 
which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to 
know that any Christian spirit working kindly in 
its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its 
mortal life too short for its vast means of useful- 
ness. Not to know that no space of regret can 
make amends for one life’s opportunities misused I 
Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!” 

“But you were always a good man of business, 
Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply 
this to himself. 

“Business!” cried the ghost, wringing its hands 
again. “Mankind was my business. The 
common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, 
forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my 
business. The dealings of my trade were but a 
drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my 
business!” 

It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that 
were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung 
it heavily upon the ground again. 

“At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre 
said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through 
crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down,, 
26 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


and never raise them to that blessed Star which 
led* the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there 
no poor homes to which its light would have 
conducted me?^^ 

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the 
spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake 
exceedingly. 

“Hear me!” cried the ghost. “My time is 
nearly gone.” 

“I will,” said Scrooge. “But don’t be hard 
upon me! Don’t be flowery, Jacobi Pray!” 

“How it is that I appear before you in a shape 
that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat 
invisible beside you many and many a day.” 

It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, 
and wiped the perspiration from his brow. 

“That is no light part of my penance,” pursued 
the ghost. “ I am here to-night to warn you, that 
you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my 
fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, 
Ebenezer.” 

“You were always a good friend to me,” said 
Scrooge. “Thank’ee!” 

“You will be haunted,” resumed the ghost, “by 
three spirits.” 

Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the 
ghost’s had done. 

“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, 
Jacob?” he demanded, in a faltering voice. 

27 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


‘Ht is.” 

‘H — I think Fd rather not,” said Scrooge. 

‘‘Without their visits,” said the ghost, “you 
cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect 
the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls one.” 

“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it 
over, Jacob?” hinted Scrooge. 

“Expect the second on the next night at the 
same hour. The third upon the next night when 
the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. 
Look to see me no more; and look that, for your 
own sake, you remember what has passed between 
us!” 

When it had said these words, the spectre took 
its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its 
head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart 
sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought 
together by the bandage. He ventured to raise 
his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor 
confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain 
wound over and about its arm. 

The apparition walked backward from him; and 
at every step it took, the window raised itself a 
little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was 
wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, 
which he did. When they were within two paces 
of each other, Marley’s ghost held up its hand, 
warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. 

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and 

28 


MARLEY’S GHOST 


fear; for on the raising of the hand, he became 
sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent 
sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings in- 
expressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The 
spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the 
mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, 
dark night. 

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in 
his curiosity. He looked out. 

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering 
hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as 
they went. Every one of them wore chains like 
Marley’s ghost; some few (they might be guilty 
governments) were linked together; none were 
free. Many had been personally known to 
Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar 
with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a 
monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who 
cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched 
woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a 
doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, 
that they sought to interfere, for good, in human 
matters, and had lost the power for ever. 

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist 
enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and 
their spirit voices faded together; and the night 
became as it had been when he walked home. 

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the 
door by which the ghost had entered. It was 

29 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

double-locked, as he had locked it with his own 
hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried 
to say “Humbug!” but stopped at the first 
syllable. And being, from the emotion he had 
undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse 
of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of 
the ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in 
need of repose, went straight to bed, without 
undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant. 

30 



THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS 


When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that, 
looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish 
the transparent window from the opaque walls of 
his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the 
darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a 
neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So 
he listened for the hour. 

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went 
on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and 
regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! 
it was past two when he went to bed. The clock 
was wrong. An icicle must have got into the 
works. Twelve! 

He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct 
this most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse 
beat twelve; and stopped. 

‘‘Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “that I 

31 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


can have slept through a whole day and far into 
another night. It isn’t possible that anything 
has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at 
noon!” 

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled 
out of bed, and groped his way to the window. 
He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve 
of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; 
and could see very little then. All he could make 
out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely 
cold, and that there was no noise of people running 
to and fro, and making a great stir, as there 
unquestionably would have been if night had 
beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the 
world. This was a great relief, because ‘‘three 
days after sight of this first of exchange pay to 
Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, 
would have become a mere United States’ security 
if there were no days to count by. 

Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and 
thought, and thought it over and over and over, 
and could make nothing of it. The more he 
thought the more perplexed he was; and the 
more he endeavoured not to think, the more he 
thought. 

Marley’s ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every 
time he resolved within himself, after mature 
inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew 
back again, like a strong spring released, to its 
32 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


first position, and presented the same problem to 
be worked all through, “Was it a dream or not?” 

Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had 
gone three quarters more, when he remembered, 
on a sudden, that the ghost had warned him of a 
visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved 
to lie awake until the hour was passed; and, con- 
sidering that he could no more go to sleep than go 
to heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution 
in his power. 

The quarter was so long, that he was more than 
once convinced he must have sunk into a doze 
unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length 
it broke upon his listening ear. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“A quarter past,” said Scrooge, counting. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“Half-past!” said Scrooge. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“A quarter to it,” said Scrooge. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“The hour itself,” said Scrooge triumphantly, 
“and nothing else!” 

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it 
now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy 
ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the 
instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn. 

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell 
you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor 

33 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


the curtains at his back, but those to which his 
face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were 
drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half- 
recumbent attitude, found himself face to face 
with the unearthly visitor, who drew them: as 
close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing 
in the spirit at your elbow. 

It was a strange figure — like a child: yet not so 
like a child as like an old man, viewed through 
some supernatural medium which gave him the 
appearance of having receded from the view, and 
being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its 
hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, 
was white as if with age; and yet the face had not 
a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the 
skin. The arms were very long and muscular; 
the hands the same, as if its hold were of un- 
common strength. Its legs and feet, most 
delicately formed, were, like those upper members, 
bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and 
round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the 
sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch 
of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular 
contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress 
trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest 
thing about it was, that from the crown of its 
head there sprang a bright, clear jet of light, by 
which all this was visible; and which was doubt- 
less the occasion of its using, in its duller 
34 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which 
it now held under its arm. 

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it 
with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest 
quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now 
in one part and now in another, and what was 
light one instant, at another time was dark, so the 
figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness ; now being 
a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with 
twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, 
now a head without a body; of which dissolving 
parts, no outline would be visible in the dense 
gloom wherein they melted away. And in the 
very wonder of this, it would be itself again; 
distinct and clear as ever. 

“Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was 
foretold to me?’’ asked Scrooge. 

“I am!” 

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, 
as if, instead of being so close beside him, it were 
at a distance. 

“Who, and what are you?” Scrooge de- 
manded. 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” 

“Long past?” inquired Scrooge, observant of his 
dwarfish stature. 

“No. Your past.” 

Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody 
why, if anybody could have asked him, but he had 

35 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


a special desire to see the spirit in his cap; and 
begged him to be covered. 

“What!” exclaimed the ghost, “would you 
so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I 
give? Is it not enough that you are one of those 
whose passions made this cap, and force me 
through whole trains of years to wear it low upon 
my brow?” 

Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to 
offend, or any knowledge of having wilfully 
“bonneted” the spirit at any period of his life. 
He then made bold to inquire what business 
brought him there. 

“Your welfare!” said the ghost. 

Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but 
could not help thinking that a night of unbroken 
rest would have been more conducive to that end. 
The spirit must have heard him thinking, for it 
said immediately — 

“Your reclamation, then. Take heed!” 

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and 
clasped him gently by the arm. 

“Rise! and walk with me!” 

It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead 
that the weather and the hour were not adapted to 
pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and the 
thermometer a long way below freezing; that he 
was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, 
and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at 
36 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman’s 
hand, was not to be resisted. He rose; but finding 
that the spirit made towards the window, clasped 
its robe in supplication. 

“I am a mortal,” Scrooge remonstrated, ‘‘and 
liable to fall.” 

“Bear but a touch of my hand therCy^ said the 
spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be 
upheld in more than this!” 

As the words were spoken, they passed through 
the wall, and stood upon an open country road, 
with fields on either hand. The city had entirely 
vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. 
The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, 
for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon 
the ground. 

“Good Heaven!” said Scrooge, clasping his 
hands together, as he looked about him. “I was 
bred in this place. I was a boy here!” 

The spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle 
touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, 
appeared still present to the old man’s sense of 
feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours 
floating in the air, each one connected with a 
thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares 
long, long forgotten! 

“Your lip is trembling,” said the ghost. “And 
what is that upon your cheek?” 

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in 

37 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


his voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the 
ghost to lead him where he would. 

‘‘You recollect the way?” inquired the spirit. 

“Remember it!” cried Scrooge, with fervour; 
“I could walk it blindfold.” 

“Strange to have forgotten it for so many 
years!” observed the ghost. “Let us go on.” 

They walked along the road — Scrooge recognis- 
ing every gate, and post, and tree — until a little 
market-town appeared in the distance, with its 
bridge, its church, and winding river. Some 
shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards 
them with boys upon their backs, who called to 
other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by 
farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and 
shouted to each other, until the broad fields were 
so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to 
hear it. 

“These are but shadows of the things that have 
been,” said the ghost. “They have no con- 
sciousness of us.” 

The jocund travellers came on; and as they 
came, Scrooge knew and named them every one. 
Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see 
them? Why did his cold eye glisten, and his 
heart leap up as they went past? Why was he 
filled with gladness when he heard them give each 
other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross- 
roads and byways, for their several homes ? What 
38 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


was Merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon 
Merry Christmas! What good had it ever done 
to him ? 

“The school is not quite deserted,” said the 
ghost. “A solitary child, neglected by his friends, 
is left there still.” 

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed. 

They left the high road, by a well-remembered 
lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull red 
brick, with a little weather-cock-surmounted cupola 
on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a 
large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the 
spacious offices were little used, their walls were 
damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their 
gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the 
stables ; and the coach-houses and sheds were over- 
run with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its 
ancient state, within; for entering the dreary hall, 
and glancing through the open doors of many 
rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold and 
vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a 
hilly bareness in the place, which associated itself 
somehow with too much getting up by candle- 
light, and not too much to eat. 

They went, the ghost and Scrooge, across the 
hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened 
before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy 
room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms 
and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was 

39 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down 
upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten 
self as he had used to be. 

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak 
and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, 
not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the 
dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless 
boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle 
swinging of an empty storehouse door, no, not a 
clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of 
Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a freer 
passage to his tears. 

The spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed 
to his younger self, intent upon his reading. 
Suddenly a man, in foreign garments — wonder- 
fully real and distinct to look at — stood outside 
the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and 
leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood. 

‘‘Why, it’s Ali Baba!” Scrooge exclaimed in 
ecstasy. “It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, 
yes, I know! One Christmas time, when yonder 
solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, 
for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And 
Valentine,” said Scrooge, “and his wild brother, 
Orson; there they go! And what’s his name, who 
was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the gate of 
Damascus; don’t you see him? And the Sultan’s 
Groom turned upside-down by the Genii; there he 
is upon his head! Serve him right! I’m glad of 
40 







© D.MSK 

Scrooge sat down and wept to see his poor forgotten self. 

Page 40. 


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FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


it, WTiat business had to be married to the 
Princess?” 

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness 
of his nature on such subjects, in a most extra- 
ordinary voice between laughing and crying, and 
to see his heightened and excited face, would have 
been a surprise to his business friends in the city, 
indeed. 

“There’s the parrot,” cried Scrooge. “Green 
body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce 
growing out of the top of his head; there he is! 
Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came 
home again after sailing round the island. ‘Poor 
Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin 
Crusoe?’ The man thought he was dreaming, 
but he wasn’t. It was the parrot, you know. 
There goes Friday, running for his life to the little 
creek! HoUo! Hoop! HoUo!” 

Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign 
to his usual character, he said, in pity for his 
former self, “Poor boy!” and cried again. 

“I wish,” Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in 
his pocket, and looking about him, after drying his 
eyes with his cuff — “but it’s too late now.” 

“What is the matter?” asked the spirit, 

“Nothing,” said Scrooge. “Nothing. There 
was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door 
last night, I should like to have given him some- 
thing; that’s all.” 


41 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


The ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its 
hand, saying as it did so, “Let us see another 
Christmas!” 

Scrooge’s former self grew large at the words, 
and the room became a little darker and more 
dirty. The panels shrank, the windows cracked; 
fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the 
naked laths were shown instead; but how all this 
was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than 
you do. He only knew that it was quite correct; 
that everything had happened so; that there he 
was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone 
home for the jolly holidays. 

He was not reading now, but walking up and 
down despairingly. Scrooge looked at the ghost, 
and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced 
anxiously towards the door. 

It opened; and a little girl, much younger than 
the boy, came darting in, and putting her arms 
about his neck, and often kissing him, addressed 
him as her “Dear, dear brother.” 

“I have come to bring you home, dear brother!” 
said the child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending 
down to laugh. “To bring you home, home, 
home!” 

“Home, little Fan?” returned the boy. 

“Yes!” said the child, brimful of glee. “Home, 
for good and all. Home, for ever and ever. 
Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that 
42 



© DMSK 


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FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 

home’s like heaven! He spoke so gently to me 
one dear night when I was going to bed, that I 
was not afraid to ask him once more if you might 
come home; and he said Yes, you should; and 
sent me in a coach to bring you. And you’re to 
be a man!” said the child, opening her eyes, ‘‘and 
are never to come back here; but first, we’re to be 
together all the Christmas long, and have the 
merriest time in all the world.” 

“You are quite a woman, little Fan!” ex- 
claimed the boy. 

She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to 
touch his head ; but being too little, laughed again, 
and stood on tiptoe to embrace him. Then she 
began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, to- 
wards the door; and he, nothing loth to go, accom- 
panied her. 

A terrible voice in the hall cried, “Bring down 
Master Scrooge’s box, there!” and in the hall 
appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared on 
Master Scrooge with a ferocious condescension, and 
threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking 
hands with him. He then conveyed him and his 
sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best- 
parlour that ever was seen, where the maps upon 
the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in 
the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he pro- 
duced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a 
block of curiously heavy cake, and administered 

43 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


instalments of those dainties to the young people; 
at the same time, sending out a negro servant to 
offer a glass of “something’’ to the postboy, who 
answered that he thanked the gentleman, but if it 
was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had 
rather not. Master Scrooge’s trunk being by this 
time tied on to the top of the chaise, the children 
bade the schoolmaster good-bye right willingly; 
and getting into it drove gaily down the garden- 
sweep: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost 
and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens 
like spray. 

“Always a delicate creature, whom a breath 
might have withered,” said the ghost. “But she 
had a large heart!” 

“So she had,” cried Scrooge. “You’re right. 
I will not gainsay it, spirit. God forbid!” 

“She died a woman,” said the ghost, “and had, 
as I think, children.” 

“One child,” Scrooge returned. 

“True,” said the ghost. “Your nephew!” 

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and an- 
swered briefly, “Yes.” 

Although they had but that moment left the 
school behind them, they were now in the busy 
thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers 
passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and 
coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and 
tumult of a real city were. It was made plaia 
44 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too 
it was Christmas time again; but it was evening, 
and the streets were lighted up. 

The ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, 
and asked Scrooge if he knew it. 

“Know it!” said Scrooge. “Was I apprenticed 
here!” 

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in 
a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that 
if he had been two inches taller he must have 
knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried 
in great excitement — 

“Why, iPs old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it’s 
Fezziwig alive again;” 

Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up 
at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. 
He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waist- 
coat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to 
his organ of benevolence; and called out in a 
comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice — 

“Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!” 

Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, 
came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow- 
’prentice. 

“Dick Wilkins, to be sure!” said Scrooge to 
the ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is. He 
was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor 
Dick! Dear, dear!” 

“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more 

45 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, 
Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up,” cried 
old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, 
“before a man can say Jack Robinson!” 

You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows 
went at it 1 They charged into the street with the 
shutters — one, two, three — had ’em up in their 
places — four, five, six — barred ’em and pinned 
’em — seven, eight, nine — and came back before 
you could have got to twelve, panting like race- 
horses. 

“Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down 
from the high desk with wonderful agility. “Clear 
away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here! 
Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!” 

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t 
have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, 
with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in 
a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if 
it were dismissed from public life for evermore; 
the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were 
trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the Are; and the 
warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and 
bright a ballroom, as you would desire to see upon 
a winter’s night. 

In came a Addler with a music-book, and went 
up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, 
and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. 
Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came 
46 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


the three Misses Fezziwig, beaming and lovable. 
In came the six young followers whose hearts they 
broke. In came all the young men and women 
employed in the business. In came the housemaid, 
with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, 
with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. 
In came the boy from over the way, who was 
suspected of not having board enough from his 
master; trying to hide himself behind the girl 
from next door but one, who was proved to have 
had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all 
came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, 
some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, 
some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and every- 
how. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; 
hands half round and back again the other way; 
down the middle and up again; round and round 
in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top 
couple always turning up in the wrong place; new 
top couple starting off again, as soon as they got 
there; all top couples at last and not a bottom one 
to help them! When this result was brought 
about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the 
dance, cried out, ‘‘Well done!” and the fiddler 
plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially 
provided for that purpose. But scorning rest upon 
his reappearance, he instantly began again, though 
there were no dances yet, as if the other fiddler 
had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, 

47 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


and he were a brand-new man resolved to beat him 
out of sight, or perish. 

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, 
and more dances, and there was cake, and there 
was negus, and there was a great piece of cold 
roast, and there was a great piece of cold boiled, 
and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. 
But the great effect of the evening came after the 
roast and boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, 
mind! the sort of man who knew his business 
better than you or I could have told it him!) 
struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old 
Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. 
Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work 
cut out for them; three or four-and-twenty pair of 
partners; people who were not to be trifled with; 
people who would dance, and had no notion of 
walking. 

But if they had been twice as many — ah, four 
times — old Fezziwig would have been a match for 
them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her^ 
she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of 
the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, 
and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue 
from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part 
of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have pre- 
dicted, at any given time, what would become 
of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. 
Fezziwig had gone all through the dance — advance 
48 



© D.MSK 

Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. 

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FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and 
curtsy, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back 
again to your place — Fezziwig “cut” — cut so 
deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and 
came upon his feet again without a stagger. 

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball 
broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their 
stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking 
hands with every person individually, as he or she 
went out, wished him or her A Merry Christmas. 
When everybody had retired but the two ’pren- 
tices, they did the same to them; and thus the 
cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left 
to their beds; which were under a counter in the 
back shop. 

During the whole of this time, Scrooge had 
acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and 
soul were in the scene, and with his former self. 
He corroborated everything, remembered every- 
thing, enjoyed everything, and underwent the 
strangest agitation. It was not until now, when 
the bright faces of his former self and Dick were 
turned from them, that he remembered the ghost, 
and became conscious that it was looking full 
upon him, while the light upon its head burned 
very clear. 

“A small matter,” said the ghost, “to make 
these silly folks so full of gratitude.” 

“Small!” echoed Scrooge. 


49 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


The spirit signed to him to listen to the two 
apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts 
in praise of Fezziwig; and when he had done so, 
said — 

‘‘Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few 
pounds of your mortal money; three or four, 
perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this 
praise?” 

“It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the re- 
mark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, 
not his latter, self. “ It isn’t that, spirit. He has 
the power to render us happy or unhappy; to 
make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure 
or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and 
looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it 
is impossible to add and count ’em up — what then ? 
The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it 
cost a fortune.” 

He felt the spirit’s glance, and stopped. 

“What is the matter?” asked the ghost. 

“Nothing particular,” said Scrooge. 

“Something, I think?” the ghost insisted. 

“No,” said Scrooge. “No. I should like to be 
able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. 
That’s all.” 

His former self turned down the lamps as 
he gave utterance to the wish; and Scrooge 
and the ghost again stood side by side in the 
open air. 

SO 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


“My time grows short,” observed the spirit. 
“Quick!” 

This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any 
one whom he could see, but it produced an im- 
mediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. 
He was older now; a man in the prime of life. 
His face, had not the harsh and rigid lines of later 
years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care 
and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless 
motion in the eye, which showed the passion that 
had taken root, and where the shadow of the grow- 
ing tree would fall. 

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair 
young girl in mourning-dress; in whose eyes there 
were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone 
out of the Ghost of Christmas Past. 

“It matters little,” she said softly. “To you 
very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if 
it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as 
I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to 
grieve.” 

“What idol has displaced you?” he rejoined. 

“A golden one.” 

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” 
he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard 
as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to 
condemn with such severity as the pursuit of 
wealth ! ” 

“You fear the world too much,” she answered 

51 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


gently. “All your other hopes have merged into 
the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid 
reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall 
off one by one, until the master-passion, gain, en- 
grosses you. Have I not?” 

“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have 
grown so much wiser, what then? I am not 
changed towards you.” 

She shook her head. 

; “Am I?” 

^ “Our contract is an old one. It was made 
when we were both poor and content to be so, 
until, in good season, we could improve our worldly 
fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. 
When it was made, you were another man.” 

“I was a boy,” he said impatiently. 

“Your own feeling tells you that you were not 
what you are,” she returned. “I am. That 
which promised happiness when we were one in 
heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. 
How often and how keenly I have thought of this, 
I will not say. It is enough that I have thought 
of it, and can release you.” 

“Have I ever sought release?” 

“In words? No. Never.” 

“In what, then?” 

“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in 
another atmosphere of life; another hope as its 
great end. In everything that made my love of 
52 



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FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


any worth or value in your sight. If this had 
never been between us,” said the girl, looking 
mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; ‘‘tell me, 
would you seek me out and try to win me now? 
Ah, no!” 

He seemed to yield to the justice of this 
supposition, in spite of himself. But he said, with 
a struggle, “You think not.” 

“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she 
answered, “Heaven knows! When / have 
learned a truth like this, I know how strong and 
irresistible it must be. But if you were free 
to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe 
that you would choose a dowerless girl — you who, 
in your very confidence with her, weigh everything 
by gain; or, choosing her, if for a moment you 
were false enough to your one guiding principle to 
do so, do I not know that your repentance and 
regret would surely follow? I do; and I release 
you. With a full heart, for the love of him you 
once were.” 

He was about to speak; but with her head 
turned from him, she resumed. 

“You may — the memory of what is past half 
makes me hope you will — have pain in this. A 
very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the 
recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, 
from which it happened well that you awoke. 
May you be happy in the life you have chosen!” 

S3 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


She left him, and they parted. 

“Spirit!” said Scrooge, “show me no more! 
Conduct me home. Why do you delight to 
torture me?” 

“One shadow more!” exclaimed the ghost. 

“No more!” cried Scrooge. “No more. I 
don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!” 

But the relentless ghost pinioned him in both 
his arms, and forced him to observe what happened 
next. 

They were in another scene and place; a room, 
not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. 
Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, 
so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the 
same, until he saw her, now a comely matron, 
sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this 
room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were 
more children there than Scrooge in his agitated 
state of mind could count; and, unlike the 
celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty 
children conducting themselves like one, but every 
child was conducting itself like forty. The con- 
sequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no 
one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother 
and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very 
much; and the latter, soon beginning to mingle in 
the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands 
most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to 
be one of them? Though I never could have 
54 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 

been so rude, no, no! I wouldn’t for the wealth 
of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and 
torn it down; and for the precious little shoe, I 
wouldn’t have plucked it off, God bless my soul! 
to save my life. As to measuring her waist in 
sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn’t 
have done it; I should have expected my arm to 
have grown round it for a punishment, and never 
come straight again. And yet I should have 
dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to 
have questioned her, that she might have opened 
them; to have looked upon the lashes of her 
downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have 
let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be 
a keepsake beyond price: iii short, I should have 
liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license 
of a child, and yet to have been man enough to 
know its value. 

But now a knocking at the door was heard, and 
such a rush immediately ensued that she, with 
laughing face and plundered dress, was borne 
towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous 
group, just in time to greet the father, who came 
home attended by a man laden with Christmas 
toys and presents. Then the shouting and the 
struggling, and the onslaught that was made on 
the defenceless porter! The scaling him, with 
chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets, despoil 
him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his 

55 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back, 
and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The 
shouts of wonder and delight with which the 
development of every package was received! 
The terrible announcement that the baby had 
been taken in the act of putting a doll’s frying-pan 
into his mouth, and was more than suspected of 
having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a 
wooden platter! The immense relief of finding 
this a false alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and 
ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is 
enough that by degrees the children and their 
emotions got out of the parlour and by one stair at 
a time, up to the top of the house; where they 
went to bed, and so subsided. 

And now Scrooge looked on more attentively 
than ever, when the master of the house, having 
his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with 
her and her mother at his own fireside; and when 
he thought that such another creature, quite as 
graceful and as full of promise, might have called 
him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard 
winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed. 

‘‘Belle,” said the husband, turning to his wife, 
with a smile, “I saw an old friend of yours this 
afternoon.” 

“Who was it?” 

“Guess!” 

“How can I? Tut, don’t I know,” she added 

56 


FIRST OF THREE SPIRITS 


in the same breath, laughing as he laughed. “Mr. 
Scrooge.” 

“Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office 
window; and as it was not shut up, and he had a 
candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. 
His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; 
and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, 
I do believe.” 

“Spirit!” said Scrooge, in a broken voice, 
“remove me from this place.” 

“I told you these were shadows of the things 
that have been,” said the ghost. “That they are 
what they are, do not blame me!” 

“Remove me!” Scrooge exclaimed. “I cannot 
bear it!” 

He turned upon the ghost, and seeing that it 
looked upon him with a face in which in some 
strange way there were fragments of all the faces it 
had shown him, wrestled with it. 

“Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no 
longer!” 

In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle 
in which the ghost with no visible resistance on its 
own part was undisturbed by any effort of its 
adversary, Scrooge observed that its light was 
burning high and bright; and dimly connecting 
that with its influence over him, he seized the 
extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it 
down upon its head. 


57 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


The spirit dropped beneath it, so that the ex- 
tinguisher covered its whole form; but though 
Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he could 
not hide the light, which streamed from under it in 
an unbroken flood upon the ground. 

He was conscious of being exhausted, and over- 
come by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, 
of being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a 
parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and 
had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into 
a heavy sleep. 

58 



THE SECOND OF THE THREE 
SPIRITS 


Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough 
snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts 
together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that 
the bell was again upon the stroke of one. He 
felt that he was restored to consciousness in the 
right nick of time, for the especial purpose of hold- 
ing a conference with the second messenger des- 
patched to him through Jacob Marley’s intervention. 
But, finding that he turned uncomfortably cold 
when he began to wonder which of his curtains 
this new spectre would draw back, he put them 
every one aside with his own hands, and lying 
down again, established a good look-out all round 
the bed; for he wished to challenge the spirit on 
the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to 
be taken by surprise, and made nervous. 


59 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume 
themselves on being acquainted with a move or 
two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, 
express the wide range of their capacity for ad- 
venture by observing that they are good for any- 
thing from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between 
which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a 
tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. 
Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as 
this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he 
was ready for a good broad field of strange appear- 
ances, and that nothing between a baby and rhino- 
ceros would have astonished him very much. 

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he 
was not by any means prepared for nothing; and, 
consequently, when the bell struck one, and no 
shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of 
trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter 
of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this 
time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and 
centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed 
upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and 
which, being only light, was more alarming than 
a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out 
what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes 
apprehensive that he might be at that very moment 
an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, 
without having the consolation of knowing it. At 
last, however, he began to think — as you or I 
60 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


would have thought at first; for it is always the 
person not in the predicament who knows what 
ought to have been done in it, and would un- 
questionably have done it too — at last I say, he 
began to think that the source and secret of this 
ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from 
whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. 
This idea taking full possession of his mind, he 
got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the 
door. 

The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a 
strange voice called him by name, and bade 
him enter. He obeyed. 

It was his own room. There was no doubt 
about that. But it had undergone a surprising 
transformation. The walls and ceiling were so 
hung with living green, that it looked a perfect 
grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming 
berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistle- 
toe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many 
little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a 
mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that 
dull petrifaction of a hearth had never known in 
Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and many 
a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to 
form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, 
poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, 
long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-pud- 
dings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry- 

61 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, 
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of 
punch, that made the chamber dim with their 
delicious steam. In easy state upon this^ couch, 
there sat a jolly giant, glorious to see; who bore 
a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, 
and held it up, high up, to shed its light on 
Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door. 

‘‘Come in!” exclaimed the ghost. “Come in! 
and know me better, man!” 

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head 
before this spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge 
he had been; and though the spirit’s eyes were 
clear and kind, he did not like to meet them. 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the 
spirit. “Look upon me!” 

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in 
one simple, deep-green robe, or mantle, bordered 
with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on 
the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if 
disdaining to be warded or concealed by any arti- 
fice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds 
of the garment, were also bare; and on its head 
it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set 
here and there with shining icicles. Its dark- 
brown curls were long and free; free as its genial 
face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery 
voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful 
air. Girded round its middle was an antique 
62 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient 
sheath was eaten up with rust. 

“You have never seen the like of me before!” 
exclaimed the spirit. 

“Never,” Scrooge made answer to it. 

“Have never walked forth with the younger 
members of my family; meaning (for I am very 
young) my elder brothers born in these later 
years?” pursued the phantom. 

“I don’t think I have,” said Scrooge. “I am 
afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, 
spirit?” 

“More than eighteen hundred,” said the ghost. 

“A tremendous family to provide for!” muttered 
Scrooge. 

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose. 

“Spirit,” said Scrooge submissively, “conduct 
me where you will. I went forth last night on 
compulsion, and I learned a lesson which is work- 
ing now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, 
let me profit by it.” 

“Touch my robe!” 

Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast. 

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, 
game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, 
pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished in- 
stantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, 
the hour of night, and they stood in the city 
streets on Christmas morning, where (for the 

63 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


weather was severe) the people made a rough, but 
brisk and not unpleasant, kind of music, in scrap- 
ing the snow from the pavement in front of their 
dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, 
whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it 
come plumping down into the road below, and 
splitting into artificial little snow-storms. 

The house fronts looked black enough, and the 
windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white 
sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier 
snow upon the ground; which last deposit had 
been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy 
wheels of carts and wagons; furrows that crossed 
and recrossed each other hundreds of times where 
the great streets branched off; and made intricate 
channels, hard to trace, in the thick yellow mud 
and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the 
shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, 
half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles 
descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the 
chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, 
caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear 
hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful 
in the climate or the town, and yet there was an 
air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer 
air 'and brightest summer sun might have en- 
deavoured to diffuse in vain. 

For the people who were shovelling away on the 
housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out 
64 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


to one another from the parapets, and now and 
then exchanging a facetious snow-ball — better- 
natured missile far than many a wordy jest — 
laughing heartily if it went right, and not less 
heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops 
were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant 
in their glory. There were great, round, pot- 
bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waist- 
coats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, 
and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic 
opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad- 
girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their 
growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their 
shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went 
by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. 
There were pears and apples, clustered high in 
blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, 
made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence, to dangle 
from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths 
might water gratis as they passed; there were piles 
of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their 
fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and 
pleasant shufflings ankle-deep through withered 
leaves; there were Norfolk biffins, squab and 
swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and 
lemons, and, in the great compactness of their 
juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching 
to be carried home in paper-bags and eaten after 
dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth 

65 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


among these choice fruits in a bowl, though 
members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, 
appeared to know that there was something going 
on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round 
their little world in slow and passionless excite- 
ment. 

The grocers’! oh, the grocers’! nearly closed, 
with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but 
through those gaps such glimpses! It was not 
alone that the scales descending on the counter 
made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller 
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters 
were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or 
even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were 
so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins 
were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so ex- 
tremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and 
straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied 
fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as 
to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and 
subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs 
were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums 
blushed in modest tartness from their highly 
decorated boxes, or that everything was good to 
eat and in its Christmas dress. But the customers 
were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful 
promise of the day, that they tumbled up against 
each other at the door, crashing their wicker 
baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the 
66 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


counter, and came running back to fetch them, 
and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in 
the best humour possible; while the grocer and his 
people were so frank and fresh that the polished 
hearts with which they fastened their aprons 
behind might have been their own, worn outside 
for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to 
peck at if they chose. 

But soon the steeples called good people all to 
church and chapel, and away they came, flocking 
through the streets in their best clothes, and with 
their gayest faces. And at the same time there 
emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes, and 
nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying 
their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of 
these poor revellers appeared to interest the spirit 
very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him 
in a baker’s doorway, and taking off the covers as 
their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their 
dinners from his torch. And it was a very un- 
common kind of torch, for once or twice when 
there were angry words between some dinner- 
carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few 
drops of water on them from it, and their good- 
humour was restored directly. For they said, it 
was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. 
And so it was ! God love it, so it was ! 

In time the bells ceased, and the bakers’ were 
shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing 

67 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


forth of all these dinners and the progress of their 
cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each 
baker’s oven; where the pavement smoked as if its 
stones were cooking too. 

‘Ts there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle 
from your torch?” asked Scrooge. 

‘‘There is. My own.” 

“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this 
day?” asked Scrooge. 

“To any kindly given. To a poor one most.” 

“Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge. 

“Because it needs it most.” 

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, 
“I wonder you, of all the beings in the many 
worlds about us, should desire to cramp these 
people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.” 

“I?” cried the spirit. 

“You would deprive them of their means of 
dining every seventh day, often the only day on 
which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge. 
“Woulda’t you?” 

“I?” cried the spirit. 

“You seek to close these places on the seventh 
day?” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same 
thing. ’ ’ 

“/ seek?” exclaimed the spirit. 

“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done 
in your name, or at least in that of your family,” 
said Scrooge. 

68 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


‘‘There are some upon this earth of yours,” 
returned the spirit, “who lay claim to know us, 
and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, 
hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, 
who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, 
as if they had never lived. Remember that, and 
charge their doings on themselves, not us.” 

Scrooge promised that he would ; and they went 
on, invisible, as they had been before, into the 
suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality 
of the ghost (which Scrooge had observed at the 
baker’s) that, notwithstanding his gigantic size, he 
could accommodate himself to any place with ease; 
and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as 
gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it 
was possible he could have done in any lofty hall. 

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good spirit 
had in showing off this power of his, or else it was 
his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his 
sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight 
to Scrooge’s clerk’s; for there he went, and took 
Scrooge with him, holding to his robe: and on the 
threshold of the door the spirit smiled, and stopped 
to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinklings 
of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen 
“Bob” a week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays 
but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet 
the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four- 
roomed house! 


69 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, 
dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, 
but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a 
goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, 
assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her 
daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master 
Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan 
of potatoes, and getting the corners of his mon- 
strous shirt-collar (Bob’s private property conferred 
upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into 
his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly 
attired, and yearned to show his linen in the 
fashionable parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, 
boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that 
outside the baker’s they had smelled the goose, 
and known it for their own; and basking in 
luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young 
Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted 
Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not 
proud, although his collars nearly choked him) 
blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up, 
knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out 
and peeled. 

“What has ever got your precious father then?” 
said Mrs. Cratchit. “And your brother. Tiny 
Tim! And Martha warn’t as late last Christmas 
Day by half an hour.” 

“Here’s Martha, mother!” said a girl, ap- 
pearing as she spoke. 

70 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


“Here’s Martha, mother!” cried the two 
young Cratchits. “Hurrah! There’s such a 
goose, Martha!” 

“Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how 
late you are!” said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a 
dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet 
for her with officious zeal. 

“We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” 
replied the girl, “and had to clear away this 
morning, mother!” 

“Well! Never mind so long as you are come,” 
said Mrs. Cratchit. “Sit ye down before the fire, 
my dear, and have a warm. Lord bless ye!” 

“No, no! There’s father coming,” cried the two 
young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. 
“Hide, Martha, hide!” 

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, 
the father, with at least three feet of comforter 
exclusive of the fringe hanging down before him; 
and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed 
to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his 
shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little 
crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron 
frame! 

“Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob 
Cratchit, looking round. 

“Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“Not coming!” said Bob, with a sudden de- 
clension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim’s 

71 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


blood-horse all the way from church, and had 
come home rampant. ‘‘Not coming upon Christ- 
mas Day!” 

Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if 
it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely 
from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, 
while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, 
and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might 
hear the pudding singing in the copper. 

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. 
Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, 
and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s 
content. 

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. 
Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself 
so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever 
heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped 
the people saw him in the church, because he was 
a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to 
remember upon Christmas Day who made lame 
beggars walk and blind men see.” 

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them 
this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny 
Tim was growing strong and hearty. 

His active little crutch was heard upon the 
floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another 
word was spoken, escorted by his brother and 
sister to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob, 
turning up his cuffs — as if, poor fellow, they were 
72 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


capable of being made more shabby — compounded 
some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, 
and stirred it round and round, and put it on the 
hob to simmer; Master Peter and the two ubi- 
quitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, 
with which they soon returned in high pro- 
cession. 

Such a bustle ensued that you might have 
thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered 
phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter 
of course — and in truth it was something very like 
it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy 
(ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; 
Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible 
vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple- 
sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took 
Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the 
table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for 
everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mount- 
ing guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into 
their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose 
before their turn came to be helped. At last the 
dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was 
succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, 
looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared 
to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and 
when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued 
forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the 
board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two 

73 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle 
of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah! 

There never was such a goose. Bob said he 
didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. 
Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, 
were the themes of universal admiration. Eked 
out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a 
sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as 
Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying 
one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they 
hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every one had had 
enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, 
were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! 
But now, the plates being changed by Miss 
Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone — too 
nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up, 
and bring it in. 

Suppose it should not be done enough! Sup- 
pose it should break in turning out! Suppose 
somebody should have got over the wall of the 
back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry 
with the goose — a supposition at which the two 
young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of 
horrors were supposed. 

Hollo! A great deal of steam! The pudding 
was out of the copper. A smell like a wash- 
ing-day! That was the cloth. A . smell like 
an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to 
each other, with a laundress’s next door to that.. 
74 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. 
Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — 
with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so 
hard and Arm, blazing in half of half a quartern 
of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly 
stuck into the top. 

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, 
and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest 
success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their 
marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight 
was off her mind, she would confess that she had 
had her doubts about the quantity of flour. 
Everybody had something to say about it, but 
nobody said or thought it was at all a small 
pudding for a large family. It would have been 
flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have 
blushed to hint at such a thing. 

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was 
cleared, the hearth swept, and the Are made up. 
The compound in the jug being tasted, and con- 
sidered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon 
the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the Are. 
Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, 
in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half 
a one; and at Bob CratchiPs elbow stood the 
family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a 
custard-cup without a handle. 

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, 
as well as golden goblets would have done; and 

75 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the 
chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. 
Then Bob proposed — 

‘‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God 
bless us!” 

Which all the family re-echoed. 

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the 
last of all. 

He sat very close to his father’s side, upon his 
little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in 
his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep 
him by his side, and dreaded that he might be 
taken from him. 

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had 
never felt before, “ tell me if Tiny Tim will live.” 

“I see a vacant seat,” replied the ghost, “in the 
poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an 
owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows re- 
main unaltered by the future, the child will die.” 

“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh, no, kind spirit! 
say he will be spared.” 

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the 
future, none other of my race,” returned the ghost, 
“will find him here. What then? If he be like 
to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus 
population.” 

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words 
quoted by the spirit, and was overcome with peni- 
tence and grief. 

76 



©CI.K 77912 


God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim. 



Iite^ ■.*-••. >L -I •. ‘ '^ ■ ^■s.:^Ml8»‘.yit 


,i'*-'V-:.--,^:«. 



SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 

“Man,” said the ghost — “if man you be in heart, 
not adamant — forbear that wicked cant until you 
have discovered what the surplus is, and where it 
is. Will you decide what men shall live, what 
men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of 
Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live 
than millions like this poor man’s child. O God! 
to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the 
too much life among his hungry brothers in the 
dust!” 

Scrooge bent before the ghost’s rebuke, and, 
trembling, cast his eyes upon the ground. But he 
raised them speedily, on hearing his own name. 

“Mr. Scrooge!” said Bob; “I’ll give you Mr. 
Scrooge, the founder of the feast!” 

“The founder of the feast indeed!” cried Mrs. 
Cratchit, reddening. “I wish I had him here. 
I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and 
I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.” 

“My dear,” said Bob, “the children! Christmas 
Day.” 

“It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said 
she, “on which one drinks the health of such an 
odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. 
You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better 
than you do, poor fellow!” 

“My dear,” was Bob’s mild answer, “Christmas 
Day.” 

“I’ll drink his health for your sake and the day’s,” 

77 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


said Mrs. Cratchit, “not for his. Long life to him! 
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 
He’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no 
doubt!” 

The children drank the toast after her. It was 
the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness 
in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t 
care twopence for it. Scrooge was the ogre of the 
family. The mention of his name cast a dark 
shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for 
full five minutes. 

After it had passed away, they were ten times 
merrier than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge 
the Baleful being done with. Bob Cratchit told 
them how he had a situation in his eye for Master 
Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full five- 
and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits 
laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter’s being 
a man of business; and Peter himself looked 
thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, 
as if he were deliberating what particular invest- 
ments he should favour when he came into the 
receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who 
was a poor apprentice at a milliner’s, then told 
them what kind of work she had to do, and how 
many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she 
meant to lie abed to-morrow morning, for a good 
long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at 
home. Also, how she had seen a countess and 
78 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


a lord some days before, and how the lord “was 
much about as tall as Peter”; at which Peter 
pulled up his collars so high that you couldn’t have 
seen his head if you had been there. All this 
time the chestnuts and the jug went round and 
round; and by and by they had a song, about a 
lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, 
who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very 
well indeed. 

There was nothing of high mark in this. They 
were not a handsome family; ^they were not well 
dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; 
their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have 
known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawn- 
broker’s. But they were happy, grateful, pleased 
with one another, and contented with the time; 
and when they faded, and looked happier yet in 
the bright sprinklings of the spirit’s torch at part- 
ing, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially 
on Tiny Tim, until the last. 

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing 
pretty heavily; and as Scrooge and the spirit went 
along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires 
in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was 
wonderful. Here the flickering of the blaze showed 
preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates 
baking through and through before the Are, and 
deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out 
cold and darkness. There, all the children of the 

79 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


house were running out into the snow to meet 
their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, 
aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here again, 
were shadows on the window-blind of guests 
assembling; and there a group of handsome girls, 
all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at 
once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbour’s 
house; where, woe upon the single man who saw 
them enter — artful witches, well they knew it — 
in a glow! 

But, if you had judged from the numbers of 
people on their way to friendly gatherings, you 
might have thought that no one was at home to 
give them welcome when they got there, instead 
of every house expecting company, and piling up 
its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how 
the ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth 
of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and 
floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its 
bright and harmless mirth on everything within 
its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on be- 
fore, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, 
and who was dressed to spend the evening some- 
where, laughed out loud as the spirit passed, though 
little kenned the lamplighter that he had any 
company but Christmas! 

And now, without a word of warning from the 
ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, 
where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast 
80 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; 
and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, or 
would have done so, but for the frost that held it 
prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and 
coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting 
sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared 
upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, 
and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in 
the thick gloom of darkest night. 

“What place is this?” asked Scrooge. 

“A place where miners live, who labour in the 
bowels of the earth,” returned the spirit. “But 
they know me. See!” 

A light shone from the window of a hut, and 
swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through 
the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful 
company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, 
old man and woman, with their children and their 
children’s children, and another generation beyond 
that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. 
The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the 
howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was 
singing them a Christmas song — it had been a very 
old song when he was a boy — and from time to 
time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as 
they raised their voices, the old man got quite 
blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his 
vigour sank again. 

The spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge 

81 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, 
sped — whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s 
horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a 
frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears 
were deafened by the thundering of water, as it 
rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful 
caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine 
the earth. 

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rock, some 
league or so from shore, and on which the waters 
chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there 
stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea- 
weed clung to its base, and storm-birds — born of 
the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the 
water — rose and fell about it, like the waves they 
skimmed. 

But even here, two men who watched the light 
had made a fire, that through the loophole in the 
thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on 
the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the 
rough table at which they sat, they wished each 
other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and 
one of them — the elder, too, with his face all 
damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the 
figure-head of an old ship might be — struck up a 
sturdy song that was like a gale in itself. 

Again the ghost sped on, above the black and 
heaving sea — on, on — until, being far away, as he 
told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a 
82 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the 
wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who 
had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their 
several stations; but every man among them 
hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas 
thought, or spoke below his breath to his com- 
panion of some bygone Christmas Day, with 
homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man 
on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had 
had a kinder word for one another on that day than 
on any day in the year; and had shared to some 
extent in its festivities; and had remembered those 
he cared for at a distance, and had known that 
they delighted to remember him. 

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listen- 
ing to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what 
a solemn thing it was to move on through the 
lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose 
depths were secrets as profound as death — it was a 
great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to 
hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater 
surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his own 
nephew’s, and to find himself in a bright, dry, 
gleaming room, with the spirit standing smiling by 
his side, and looking at that same nephew with 
approving affability! 

‘‘Ha, ha!” laughed Scrooge’s nephew. “Ha, 
ha, ha!” 

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, 

83 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


to know a man more blessed in a laugh than 
Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to 
know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll 
cultivate his acquaintance. 

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of 
things, that while there is infection in disease and 
sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly 
contagious as laughter and good-humour. When 
Scrooge’s nephew laughed in this way — holding 
his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face 
into the most extravagant contortions — Scrooge’s 
niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. 
And their assembled friends being not a bit behind- 
hand, roared out lustily. 

“Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!” 

“He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I 
live!” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “He believed it, 
too!” 

“More shame for him, Fred!” said Scrooge’s 
niece indignantly. Bless those women; they 
never do anything by halves. They are always in 
earnest. 

She was very pretty — exceedingly pretty. With 
a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe 
little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed — as no 
doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about 
her chin, that melted into one another when she 
laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever 
saw in any little creature’s head. Altogether, she 
84 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


was what you would have called provoking, you 
know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satis- 
factory. 

“He’s a comical old fellow,” said Scrooge’s 
nephew, “that’s the truth; and not so pleasant as 
he might be. However, his offences carry their 
own punishment, and I have nothing to say against 
him.” 

“I’m sure he is very rich, Fred,” hinted Scrooge’s 
niece. “At least you always tell me so.” 

“What of that, my dear?” said Scrooge’s 
nephew. “His wealth is of no use to him. He 
don’t do any good with it. He don’t make himself 
comfortable with it. He hasn’t the satisfaction of 
thinking — ha, ha, ha! — that he is ever going to 
benefit us with it.” 

“I have no patience with him,” observed 
Scrooge’s niece. Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, and all 
the other ladies, expressed the same opinion. 

“Oh, I have!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “I am 
sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I 
tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, 
always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike 
us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s 
the consequence? He don’t lose much of a 
dinner.” 

“Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” 
interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said 
the same, and they must be allowed to have been 

85 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


competent judges, because they had just had 
dinner; and, with the dessert upon the table, were 
clustered round the fire, by lamplight. 

‘‘Well! I am very glad to hear it,’’ said Scrooge’s 
nephew; “because I haven’t any great faith in 
these young housekeepers. What do you say. 
Topper?” 

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of 
Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, for he answered that a 
bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right 
to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat 
Scrooge’s niece’s sister — the plump one with the 
lace tucker; not the one with the roses — blushed. 

“Do go on, Fred,” said Scrooge’s niece, clapping 
her hands. “He never finishes what he begins to 
say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!” 

Scrooge’s nephew revelled in another laugh, and 
as it was impossible to keep the infection off — 
though the plump sister tried hard to do it with 
aromatic vinegar — his example was unanimously 
followed. 

“I was only going to say,” said Scrooge’s 
nephew, “that the consequence of his taking a 
dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as 
I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, 
which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses 
pleasanter companions than he can find in his own 
thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his 
dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same 
86 



© OMSK 


Scrooge’s niece played well upon the harp. 


Page 87. 


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SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I 
pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, 
but he can’t help thinking better of it — I defy him 
— if he finds me going there, in good temper, year 
after year, and saying. Uncle Scrooge, how are 
you ? If it only puts him in the vein to leave his 
poor clerk fifty pounds, thafs something; and I 
think I shook him yesterday.” 

It was their turn to laugh now, at the notion of 
his shaking Scrooge. But being thoroughly good- 
natured, and not much caring what they laughed 
at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged 
them in their merriment, and passed the bottle, 
joyously. 

After tea, they had some music. For they were 
a musical family, and knew what they were about, 
when they sang a glee or catch, I can assure you: 
especially Topper, who could growl away in the 
bass like a good one, and never swell the large 
veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over it. 
Scrooge’s niece played well upon the harp; and 
played among other tunes a simple little air (a 
mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in 
two minutes), which had been familiar to the child 
who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as 
he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas 
Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the 
things that ghost had shown him, came upon his 
mind; he softened more and more; and thought 

87 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, 
he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for 
his own happiness with his own hands, without 
resorting to the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob 
Marley. 

But they didn’t devote the whole evening to 
music. After a while they played at forfeits; for 
it is good to be children sometimes, and never 
better than at Christmas, when its mighty 
Founder was a child Himself. Stop! There 
was first a game at blindman’s-buff. Of course 
there was. And I no more believe Topper was 
really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. 
My opinion is, that it was a done thing between 
him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that the Ghost of 
Christmas Present knew it. The way he went 
after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an 
outrage on the credulity of human nature. 
Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the 
chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering 
himself among the curtains, wherever she went, 
there went he ! He always knew where the plump 
sister was. He wouldn’t catch anybody else. If 
you had fallen up against him (as some of them 
did) on purpose, he would have made a feint of 
endeavoring to seize you, which would have been 
an affront to your understanding, and would 
instantly have sidled off in the direction of the 
plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn’t 
88 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


fair: and it really was not. But when at last he 
caught her — when, in spite of all her silken 
rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he 
got her into a corner whence there was no escape — 
then his conduct was the most execrable. For 
his pretending not to know her — his pretending 
that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and 
further to assure himself of her identity by pressing 
a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain 
about her neck — was vile, monstrous! No doubt 
she told him her opinion of it, when, another blind- 
man being in office, they were so very confidential 
together, behind the curtains. 

Scrooge’s niece was not one of the blindman’s- 
buff party, but was made comfortable with a large 
chair and a foot-stool, in a snug corner, where the 
ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But 
she joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to 
admiration with all the letters of the alphabet. 
Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, 
she was very great, and, to the secret joy of 
Scrooge’s nephew, beat her sisters hollow: though 
they were sharp girls too, as Topper could have 
told you. There might have been twenty people 
there, young and old, but they all played, and so 
did Scrooge; for, wholly forgetting in the interest 
he had in what was going on, that his voice made 
no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with 
his guess quite loud, and very often guessed right, 

89 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, 
warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper 
than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in his head 
to be. 

The ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this 
mood, and looked upon him with such favour, that 
he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until 
the guests departed. But this the spirit said could 
not be done. 

‘‘Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “One 
half-hour, spirit, only one!” 

It was a game called Yes and No, where 
Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and 
the rest must find out what; he only answering to 
their questions yes or no, as the case was. The 
brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, 
elicited from him that he was thinking of an 
animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, 
a savage animal, an animal that growled and 
grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and 
lived in London, and walked about the streets, 
and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by 
anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was 
never killed in a market, and was not a horse or an 
ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a 
pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question 
that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh 
roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled 
that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and 
90 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a 
similar state, cried out — 

‘T have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! 
I know what it is!” 

‘‘What is it?” cried Fred. 

“It’s your uncle Scro-o-o-o-ogel” 

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the 
universal sentiment, though some objected that 
the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been 
“Yes”; inasmuch as an answer in the negative 
was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from 
Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any 
tendency that way. 

“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am 
sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not 
to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine 
ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, 
‘Uncle Scrooge!’” 

“Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried. 

“A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year 
to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s 
nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may 
he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!” 

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay 
and light of heart, that he would have pledged the 
unconscious company in return, and thanked them 
in an inaudible speech, if the ghost had given him 
time. But the whole scene passed off in the 
breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; 

91 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


and he and the spirit were again upon their 
travels. 

Much they saw, and far they went, and many 
homes they visited, but always with a happy end* 
The spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they were 
cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at 
home; by struggling men, and they were patient in 
their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In 
almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every ref- 
uge, where vain man in his little brief authority had 
not made fast the door, and barred the spirit out, 
he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts* 

It was a long night, if it were only a night; 
but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the 
Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed into- 
the space of time they passed together. It was 
strange, too, that while Scrooge remained un- 
altered in his outward form, the ghost grew older, 
clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, 
but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s 
Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the spirit 
as they stood together in an open space, he noticed 
that its hair was gray. 

‘‘Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge. 

“My life upon this globe is very brief,” replied 
the ghost. “It ends to-night.” 

“To-night!” cried Scrooge. 

“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is 
drawing near.” 

92 


SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS 


The chimes were ringing the three-quarters-past 
eleven at that moment. 

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I 
ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the spirit’s 
robe, “but I see something strange, and not be- 
longing to yourself, protruding from your skirts. 
Is it a foot or a claw?” 

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is 
upon it,” was the spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look 
here.” 

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two 
children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, 
miserable. They kneeled down at its feet, and 
clung upon the outside of its garment. 

“Oh, man! look here. Look, look, down here!” 
exclaimed the ghost. 

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, 
ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in 
their humility. Where graceful youth should 
have filled their features out, and touched them 
with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, 
like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, 
and pulled them into shreds. Where angels 
might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and 
glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, 
no perversion of Humanity, in any grade, through 
all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has mon- 
sters half so horrible and dread. 

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them 

93 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


shown to him in this way, he tried to say they 
were fine children, but the words choked them- 
selves, rather than be parties to a lie of such 
enormous magnitude. 

^‘Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say 
no more. 

“They are man’s,” said the spirit, looking down 
upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing 
from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This 
girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their 
degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his 
brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the 
writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the spirit, 
stretching out its hand towards the city. 
“Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for 
your factious purposes, and make it worse! And 
bide the end.” 

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried 
Scrooge. 

“Are there no prisons?” said the spirit, turning 
on him for the last time with his own words. 
“Are there no workhouses?” 

The bell struck twelve. 

Scrooge looked about for the ghost, and saw it 
not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he 
remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, 
and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn phantom, 
draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the 
ground, towards him. 

94 



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“Here’s the turkey. Hollo! Whoop! How are you? Merry Christmas!” 

Page 124. 


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THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


The phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. 
When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon 
his knee; for in the very air through which this 
spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and 
mystery. 

It was shrouded in a deep-black garment, which 
concealed its head, its face, its form, and left 
nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. 
But for this it would have been difficult to detach 
its figure from the night, and separate it from the 
darkness by which it was surrounded. 

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came 
beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled 
him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for 
the spirit neither spoke nor moved. 

‘H am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas 
Yet to Come?’’ said Scrooge. 


95 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


The spirit answered not, but pointed onward 
with his hand. 

“You are about to show me shadows of the 
things that have not happened, but will happen in 
the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that 
so, spirit?” 

The upper portion of the garment was con- 
tracted for an instant in its folds, as if the spirit 
had inclined its head. That was the only answer 
he received. 

Although well used to ghostly company by this 
time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that 
his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that 
he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow 
it. The spirit paused a moment, as observing his 
condition, and giving him time to recover. 

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It 
thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to 
know that behind the dusky shroud there were 
ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, 
though he stretched his own to the utmost, could 
see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap 
of black. 

“Ghost of the future!” he exclaimed, “I fear 
you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I 
know your purpose is to do me good, and as I 
hope to live to be another man from what I was, 
I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with 
a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me ? ” 

96 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed 
straight before them. 

‘‘Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The 
night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, 
I know. Lead on, spirit!” 

The phantom moved away as it had come 
towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of 
its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and 
carried him along. 

They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the 
city rather seemed to spring up about them, and 
encompass them of its own act. But there they 
were, in the heart of it; on ’Change, amongst the 
merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked 
the money in their pockets, and conversed in 
groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled 
thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so 
forth, as Scrooge had seen them often. 

The spirit stopped beside one little knot of 
business men. Observing that the hand was 
pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to 
their talk. 

“No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous 
chin, “I don’t know much about it either way. 
I only know he’s dead.” 

“When did he die?” inquired another. 

“Last night, I believe.” 

“Why, what was the matter with him?” asked 
a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a 

97 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

very large snuff-box. thought he’d never 
die.” 

‘‘God knows,” said the first, with a yawn. 

“What has he done with his money?” asked a 
red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence 
on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of 
a turkey-cock. 

“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large 
chin, yawning again. “Left it to his company, 
perhaps. He hasn’t left it to me. That’s all I 
know.” 

This pleasantry was received with a general 
laugh. 

“ It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the 
same speaker; “for upon my life I don’t know of 
anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party 
and volunteer?” 

“I don’t, mind going if a lunch is provided,” 
observed the gentleman with the excrescence on 
his nose. “But I must be fed, if I make one.” 

Another laugh. 

“Well, I am the most disinterested among you, 
after all,” said the first speaker, “for I never wear 
black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I’ll 
offer to go, if anybody else will. When I come to 
think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his 
most particular friend; for we used to stop and 
speak whenever we met. Bye, bye!” 

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed 

98 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


with other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and 
looked towards the spirit for an explanation. 

The phantom glided on into a street. Its finger 
pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened 
again, thinking that the explanation might lie 
here. 

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were 
men of business, very wealthy, and of great im- 
portance. He had made a point of always standing 
well in their esteem — in a business point of view, 
that is ; strictly in a business point of view. 

“How are you.^” said one. 

“How are you?” returned the other. 

“Well!” said the first. “Old Scratch has got 
his own at last, hey?” 

“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, 
isn’t it?” 

“Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not 
a skater, I suppose?” 

“No. No. Something else to think of. Good- 
morning!” 

Not another word. That was their meeting, 
their conversation, and their parting. 

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that 
the spirit should attach importance to conversations 
apparently so trivial; but feeling assured that they 
must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to 
consider what it was likely to be. They could 
scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the 

99 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was past, 
and this ghost’s province was the future. Nor 
could he think of any one immediately connected 
with himself to whom he could apply them. But 
nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied 
they had some latent moral for his own improve- 
ment, he resolved to treasure up every word he 
heard, and everything he saw; and especially to 
observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. 
For he had an expectation that the conduct of his 
future self would give him the clue he missed, and 
would render the solution of these riddles easy. 

He looked about in that very place for his own 
image; but another man stood in his accustomed 
corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual 
time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of 
himself among the multitudes that poured in 
through the porch. It gave him little surprise, 
however; for he had been revolving in his mind 
a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his 
new-born resolutions carried out in this. 

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the phantom, 
with its outstretched hand. When he roused him- 
self from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the 
turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to 
himself, that the unseen eyes were looking at him 
keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold. 

They left the busy scene, and went into an 
obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never 
100 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 

penetrated before, although he recognised its situa- 
tion, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and 
narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the 
people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys 
and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged 
their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the 
straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked 
with crime, with filth, and misery. 

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was 
a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house 
roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and 
greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within, 
were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, 
hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all 
kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise 
were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly 
rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of 
bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by 
a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a gray- 
haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who 
had screened himself from the cold air without, by 
a frowsy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung 
upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury 
of calm retirement. 

Scrooge and the phantom came into the presence 
of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle 
slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, 
when another woman, similarly laden, came in 
too; and she was closely followed by a man in 

101 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


faded black, who was no less startled by the sight 
of them than they had been upon the recognition 
of each other. After a short period of blank 
astonishment, in which the old man with the 
pipe had joined them, they all three burst into 
a laugh. 

“Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” 
cried she who had entered first. “Let the laun- 
dress alone to be the second; and let the under- 
taker’s man alone to be the third. Look here, old 
Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three met 
here without meaning it!” 

“You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said 
old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. 
“ Come into the parlour. You were made free of it 
long ago, you know; and the other two ain’t 
strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. 
Ah! How it screaks! There ain’t such a rusty 
bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I 
believe; and I’m sure there’s no such old bones here, 
as mine. Ha, ha! We’re all suitable to our call- 
ing; we’re well matched. Come into the parlour. 
Come into the parlour.” 

The parlour was the space behind the screen of 
rags; the old man raked the fire together with an 
old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp 
(for it was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it 
into his mouth again. 

While he did this, the woman who had already 

102 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


spoken threw her bundle on the floor and sat down 
in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her 
elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold 
defiance at the other two. 

‘‘What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” 
said the woman. “Every person has a right to 
take care of themselves. He always did!” 

“That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. “No 
man, more so.” 

“Why then, don’t stand staring as if you was 
afraid, woman; who’s the wiser We’re not 
going to pick holes in each other’s coats, I 
suppose?” 

“No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the man 
together. “We should hope not.” 

“Very well, then!” cried the woman. “That’s 
enough. Who’s the worse for the loss of a few 
things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.” 

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. 

“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a 
wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why 
wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, 
he’d have had somebody to look after him when he 
was struck with death, instead of lying gasping 
out his last there, alone by himself.” 

“ It’s the truest word that every was spoke,” said 
Mrs. Dilber. “It’s a judgment on him.” 

“I wish it was a little heavier judgment,” re- 
plied the woman; “and it should have been, you 

103 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands 
on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, 
and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. 
I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them 
to see it. We knew pretty well that we were 
helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. 
It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.” 

But the gallantry of her friends would not allow 
of this; and the man in faded black, mounting the 
breach first, produced his plunder. It was not 
extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of 
sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value, 
were all. They were severely examined and 
appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was 
disposed to give for each, upon the wall, and added 
them up into a total when he found that there was 
nothing more to come. 

‘‘That’s your account,” said Joe, “and I wouldn’t 
give another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not 
doing it. Who’s next?” 

Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a 
little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver tea- 
spoons, a pair of sugar-tongs and a few boots. 
Her account was stated on the wall in the same 
manner. 

“I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weak- 
ness of mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,” 
said old Joe. “That’s your account. If you 
asked me for another penny, and made it an open 
104 



©DMSK 


“They are not torn down,” cried Scrooge, folding one of the bed-curtains 

IN HIS ARMS. 


Page 120. 


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LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


question, I’d repent of being so liberal, and knock 
off half a crown.” 

“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the first 
woman. 

Joe went down on his knees for the greater con- 
venience of opening it, and having unfastened a 
great many knots, dragged out a large heavy roll 
of some dark stuff. 

“What do you call this?” said Joe. “Bed- 
curtains!” 

“Ah!” returned the woman, laughing and 
leaning forward on her crossed arms. “Bed- 
curtains!” 

“You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, 
rings and all, with him lying there?” said Joe. 

“Yes, I do,” replied the woman. “Why 
not?” 

“You were born to make your fortune,” said 
Joe, “and you’ll certainly do it.” 

“I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can 
get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake 
of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe,” 
returned the woman coolly. “Don’t drop that oil 
upon the blankets, now.” 

“His blankets?” asked Joe. 

“Whose else’s do you think?” replied the woman. 
“He isn’t likely to take cold without ’em, I 
dare say.” 

“I hope he didn’t die of anything catching? 

105 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


Eh?” said old Joe, stopping in his work, and 
looking up. 

“Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the 
woman. “I ain’t so fond of his company that I’d 
loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah! 
You may look through that shirt till your eyes 
ache; but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a thread- 
bare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one 
too. They’d have wasted it if it hadn’t been 
for me.” 

“What do you call wasting of it?” asked old 
Joe. 

“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” 
replied the woman, with a laugh. “Somebody 
was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. 
If calico ain’t good enough for such a purpose, it 
isn’t good enough for anything. It’s quite as 
becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier than 
he did in that one.” 

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As 
they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty 
light afforded by the old man’s lamp, he viewed 
them with a detestation and disgust, which could 
hardly have been greater, though they had been 
obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself. 

“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, when old 
Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told 
out their several gains upon the ground. “This is 
the end of it, you see. He frightened every one 
106 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


away from him when he was alive, to profit us 
when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!” 

‘‘Spirit!” said Scrooge, shuddering from head 
to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy 
man might be my own. My life tends that way 
now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!” 

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, 
and now he almost touched a bed — a bare, un- 
curtained bed — on which, beneath a ragged sheet, 
there lay a something covered up, which though it 
was dumb, announced itself in awful language. 
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed 
with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round 
it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to 
know what kind of room it was. A pale light, 
rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; 
and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, un- 
wept, uncared for, was the body of this man. 

Scrooge glanced towards the phantom. Its 
steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover 
was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising 
of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s part, 
would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, 
felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do 
it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil 
than to dismiss the spectre at his side. 

Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up 
thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as 
thou hast at thy command; for this is thy 

107 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


dominion ! But of the loved, revered, and 
honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to 
thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. 
It is not that the hand is heavy, and will fall down 
when released; it is not that the heart and pulse 
are still; but that the hand was open, generous, 
and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and 
the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And 
see his good deeds springing from the wound, to 
sow, the world with life immortal 1 

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s 
ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon 
the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised 
up now, what would be his foremost thoughts.^ 
Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? They have 
brought him to a rich end, truly! 

He lay, in the dark, empty house, with not a 
man, a woman, or a child, to say, ‘‘he was kind to 
me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind 
word I will be kind to him.” A cat was tearing at 
the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats 
beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in 
the room of death, and why they were so restless 
and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think. 

“Spirit!” he said, “this is a fearful place. In 
leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. 
Let us go!” 

Still the ghost pointed with an unmoved finger 
to the head. 

108 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


understand you,” Scrooge returned, ‘‘and I 
would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, 
spirit. I have not the power.” 

Again it seemed to look at him. 

“If there is any person in the town who feels 
emotion caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge, 
quite agonised, “show that person to me, spirit, I 
beseech you!” 

The phantom spread its dark robe before him 
for a moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, 
revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and 
her children were. 

She was expecting some one, and with anxious 
eagerness; for she walked up and down the room; 
started at every sound; looked out from the 
window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, 
to work with her needle; and could hardly bear 
the voices of the children in their play. 

At length the long-expected knock was heard. 
She hurried to the door, and met her husband; a 
man whose face was careworn and depressed, 
though he was young. There was a remarkable 
expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of 
which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to 
repress. 

He sat down to the dinner that had been hoard- 
ing for him by the fire; and when she asked him 
faintly what news (which was not until after a long 
silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer. 

109 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


‘Hs it good,” she said, ‘‘or bad?” — to help him. 

“Bad,” he answered. 

“We are quite ruined?” 

“No. There is hope yet, Caroline.” 

“If he relents,” she said, amazed, “there is. 
Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has 
happened.” 

“He is past relenting,” said her husband. “He 
is dead.” 

She was a mild and patient creature if her face 
spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to 
hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She 
prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was 
sorry; but the first was the emotion of her 
heart. 

“What the half-drunken woman whom I told 
you of last night, said to me, when I tried to see 
him and obtain a week’s delay, and what I thought 
was a mere excuse to avoid me, turns out to have 
been quite true. He was not only very ill, but 
dying, then.” 

“To whom will our debt be transferred?” 

“I don’t know. But before that time we shall 
be ready with the money; and even though we 
were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so 
merciless a creditor in his successor. We may 
sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!” 

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were 
lighter. The children’s faces, hushed and clustered 

no . 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


round to hear what they so little understood, were 
brighter; and it was a happier house for this man’s 
death! The only emotion that the ghost could 
show him, caused by the event, was one of 
pleasure. 

‘‘Let me see some tenderness connected with a 
death,” said Scrooge; “or that dark chamber, 
spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever 
present to me.” 

The ghost conducted him through several streets 
familiar to his feet; and as they went along, 
Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but 
nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor 
Bob Cratchit’s house — the dwelling he had visited 
before — and found the mother and the children 
seated round the fire. 

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits 
were as still as statues in one corner, and sat 
looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. 
The mother and her daughters were engaged in 
sewing. But surely they were very quiet! 

“‘And He took a child, and set him in the 
midst of them.’ ” 

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He 
had not dreamed them. The boy must have read 
them out, as he and the spirit crossed the threshold. 
Why did he not go on? 

The mother laid her work upon the table, and 
put her hand up to her face. 


Ill 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“The colour hurts my eyes,” she said. 

The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim! 

“They’re better now again,” said Cratchit’s wife. 
“It makes them weak by candle-light; and I 
wouldn’t show weak eyes to your father when he 
comes home, for the world. It must be near his 
time.” 

“Past it rather,” Peter answered, shutting up 
his book. “But I think he has walked a little 
slower than he used, these few last evenings, 
mother.” 

They were very quiet again. At last she said, 
and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered 
once — 

“I have known him walk with — I have known 
him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very 
fast indeed.” 

“And so have I,” cried Peter. “Often.” 

“And so have I,” exclaimed another. So had 
all. 

“But he was very light to carry,” she resumed, 
intent upon her work, “and his father loved him 
so, that it was no trouble; no trouble. And there 
is your father at the door!” 

She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in 
his comforter — he had need of it, poor fellow — 
came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, 
and they all tried who should help him to it most. 
Then the two young Cratchits got upon his knees 
112 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


and laid, each child a little cheek, against his face, 
as if they said, ‘‘Don’t mind it, father. Don’t be 
grieved!” 

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke 
pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the 
work upon the table, and praised the industry and 
speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would 
be done long before Sunday, he said. 

“Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?” 
said his wife. 

“Yes, my dear,” returned Bob. “I wish you 
could have gone. It would have done you good to 
see how green a place it is. But you’ll see it often. 
I promised him that I would walk there on a 
Sunday. My little, little child!” cried Bob. 
“My little child!” 

He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help 
it. If he could have helped it, he and his child 
would have been farther apart, perhaps, than they 
were. 

He left the room, and went upstairs into the 
room above, which was lighted cheerfully, and 
hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close 
beside the child, and there were signs of some one 
having been there lately. Poor Bob sat ‘down in 
it, and when he had thought a little and composed 
himself, he kissed the little face. He was 
reconciled to what had happened, and went down 
again quite happy. 


113 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls 
and mother working still. Bob told them of the 
extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge’s nephew, 
whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, 
meeting him in the street that day, and seeing that 
he looked a little — ‘‘just a little down, you know,” 
said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress 
him. ‘‘On which,” said Bob, “for he is the pleas- 
antest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told 
him. ‘I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,’ 
he said, ‘and heartily sorry for your good wife.’ 
By the bye, how he ever knew that I don’t 
know.” 

“Knew what, my dear?” 

“Why, that you were a good wife,” replied 
Bob. 

“Everybody knows that!” said Peter. 

“Very well observed, my boy!” cried Bob. “I 
hope they do. ‘Heartily sorry,’ he said, ‘for your 
good wife. If I can be of service to you in any 
way,’ he said, giving me his card, ‘that’s where I 
live. Pray come to me.’ Now, it wasn’t,” cried 
Bob, “for the sake of anything he might be 
able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, 
that this was quite delightful. It really seemed 
as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt with 
us.” 

“I’m sure he’s a good soul!” said Mrs. Crat- 
chit. 


114 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


“You would be surer of it, my dear,” returned 
Bob, “if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn’t 
be at all surprised — mark what I say! — if he got 
Peter a better situation.” 

“Only hear that, Peter,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“And then,” cried one of the girls, “Peter will 
be keeping company with some one, and setting 
up for himself.” 

“Get along with you!” retorted Peter, 
grinning. 

“It’s just as likely as not,” said Bob, “one of 
these days ; though there’s plenty of time for that, 
my dear. But however and whenever we part 
from one another, I am sure we shall none of us 
forget poor Tiny Tim — shall we — or this first 
parting that there was among us?” 

“Never, father!” cried they all. 

“And I know,” said Bob, “I know, my dears, 
that when we recollect how patient and how mild 
he was, although he was a little, little child, we 
shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget 
poor Tiny Tim in doing it.” 

“No, never, father!” they all cried again. 

“I am very happy,” said little Bob, “I am very 
happy!” 

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed 
him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter 
and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy 
childish essence was from God! 


115 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“Spectre,” said Scrooge, “something informs me 
that our parting moment is at hand. I know it, 
but I know not how. Tell me what man that was 
whom we saw lying dead?” 

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come conveyed 
him, as before — though at a different time, he 
thought: indeed, there seemed no order in these 
latter visions, save that they were in the future — 
into the resorts of business men, but showed him 
not himself. Indeed, the spirit did not stay for 
anything, but went straight on, as to the end just 
now desired, until besought by Scrooge to tarry 
for a moment. 

“This court,” said Scrooge, “through which we 
hurry now, is where my place of occupation is, and 
has been for a length of time. I see the house. 
Let me behold what I shall be, in days to 
come!” 

The spirit stopped; the hand was pointed else- 
where. 

“The house is yonder,” Scrooge exclaimed. 
“Why do you point away?” 

The inexorable finger underwent no change. 

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and 
looked in. It was an office still, but not his. 
The furniture was not the same, and the figure in 
the chair was not himself. The phantom pointed 
as before. 

He joined it once again, and wondering why and 

116 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


whither he had gone, accompanied it until they 
reached an iron gate. He paused to look round 
before entering. 

A churchyard. Here, then-, the wretched man 
whose name he had now to learn lay underneath 
the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in 
by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the 
growth of vegetation’s death, not life; choked up 
with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. 
A worthy place! 

The spirit stood among the graves, and pointed 
down to one. He advanced towards it, trembling. 
The phantom was exactly as it had been, but he 
dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn 
shape. 

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which 
you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. 
Are these the shadows of the things that will be, 
or are they the shadows of the things that may be, 
only?” 

Still the ghost pointed downward to the grave 
by which it stood. 

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to 
which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said 
Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, 
the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you 
show me!” 

The spirit was immovable as ever. 

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; 

117 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


and following the finger, read upon the stone of 
the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer 
Scrooge. 

“Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he 
cried, upon his knees. 

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and 
back again. 

“No, spirit! Oh, no, no!” 

The finger still was there. 

“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, 
“hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not 
be the man I must have been but for this inter- 
course. Why show me this, if I am past all 
hope?” 

For the first time the hand appeared to shake. 

“Good spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the 
ground he fell before it, “your nature intercedes 
for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may 
change these shadows you have shown me, by an 
altered life!” 

The kind hand trembled. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try 
to keep it all the year. I will live in the past, the 
present, and the future. The spirits of all three 
shall strive within me. I will not shut out the 
lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge 
away the writing on this stone!” 

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It 
sought to free itself, but he was strong in his en- 
118 


LAST OF THE SPIRITS 

treaty, and detained it. The spirit, stronger yet, 
repulsed him. 

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have 
his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the 
phantom’s hood and dress. It shrank, collapsed, 
and dwindled down into a bedpost. 


119 



THE END OF IT 

Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was 
his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest 
of all, the time before him was his own, to make 
amends in! 

“I will live in the past, the present, and the 
future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of 
bed. ‘‘The spirits of all three shall strive within 
me. O Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas 
time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, 
old Jacob; on my knees!” 

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his 
good intentions, that his broken voice would 
scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing 
violently in his conflict with the spirit, and his face 
was wet with tears. 

“They are not torn down,” cried Scrooge, fold- 
ing one of his bed-curtains in his arms, “they are 
120 



© D.MSK 

“And therefore I am about to raise your salary.” 


Page 129. 


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THE END OF IT 


not torn down, rings and all. They are here — I 
am here — the shadows of the things that would 
have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I 
know they will!” 

His hands were busy with his garments all this 
time; turning them inside out, putting them 
on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, 
making them parties to every kind of extrava- 
gance. 

‘H don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, 
laughing and crying in the same breath, and making 
a perfect Laocoon of himself with his stockings. 
I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an 
angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as 
giddy as a drunken man. A Merry Christmas to 
everybody! A Happy New Year to all the world. 
Hollo, here! Whoop! Hollo! 

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was 
now standing there perfectly winded. 

‘‘There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in!” 
cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round 
the fireplace. “There’s the door, by which the 
ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There’s the 
corner where the ghost of Christmas Present sat! 
There’s the window where I saw the wandering 
spirits ! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. 
Ha, ha, ha!” 

Really, for a man who had been out of practice 
for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most 

121 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line 
of brilliant laughs! 

‘H don’t know what day of the month it 
is!” said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I’ve 
been among the spirits. I don’t know anything. 
I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. 
I’d rather be a baby. Hollo! Whoop! Hollo, 
here!” 

He was checked in his transports by the churches 
ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. 
Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, 
dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, 
glorious ! 

Running to the window, he opened it, and put 
out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, 
jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to 
dance to; golden sunlight; heavenly sky; sweet 
fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious! 

‘‘What’s to-day?” cried Scrooge, calling down- 
ward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had 
loitered in to look about him. 

“Eh?” returned the boy, with all his might 
of wonder. 

“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge. 

“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why Christmas 
Day.” 

“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. 
“I haven’t missed it. The spirits have done it all 
in one night. They can do anything they like* 
122 


THE END OF IT 


Of course they can. Of course they can. Hollo, 
my fine fellow!” 

‘‘Hollo!” returned the boy. 

“Do you know the poulterer’s in the next street 
but one, at the corner?” Scrooge inquired. 

“I should hope I did,” replied the lad. 

“An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A re- 
markable boy! Do you know whether they’ve 
sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there? 
— Not the little prize turkey: the big one?” 

“What, the one as big as me?” returned 
the boy. 

“What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s 
a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!” 

“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy. 

“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.” 

“Walk-ER!” exclaimed the boy. 

“No, no,” said Scrooge, “I am in earnest. Go 
and buy it, and tell ’em to bring it here, that I 
may give them the direction where to take it. 
Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a 
shilling. Come back with him in less than five 
minutes, and I’ll give you half a crown!” 

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had 
a steady hand at a trigger who could have got 
a shot off half so fast. 

“I’ll send it to Bob Cratchit’s!” whispered 
Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a 
laugh. “He shan’t know who sends it. It’s twice 

123 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made 
such a joke as sending it to Bob’s will be!” 

The hand in which he wrote the address was not 
a steady one, but write it he did, somehow, and 
went downstairs to open the street door, ready for 
the coming of the poulterer’s man. As he stood 
there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught 
his eye. 

shall love it, as long as I live!” cried Scrooge, 
patting it with his hand. I scarcely ever looked 
at it before. What an honest expression it has in 
its face. It’s a wonderful knocker. Here’s the 
turkey. Hollo 1 Whoop 1 How are you ? Merry 
Christmas!” 

It was a turkey! He never could have stood 
upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped 
’em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing- 
wax. 

“Why, it’s impossible to carry that to Camden 
Town,” said Scrooge. “You must have a cab.” 

The chuckle with which he said this, and the 
chuckle with which he paid for the turkey, and the 
chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the 
chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were 
only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he 
sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled 
till he cried. 

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand 
continued to shake very much; and shaving re-- 
124 



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Scrooge regarded every one with a delightful smile. 

Page 125. 


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THE END OF IT 


quires attention, even when you don’t dance while 
you are at it. But if he had cut the end of his nose 
off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster 
over it, and been quite satisfied. 

He dressed himself ‘‘all in his best,” and at last 
got out into the streets. The people were by this 
time pouring forth, as he had seen them with the 
Ghost of Christmas Present; and walking with his 
hands behind him, Scrooge regarded every one 
with a delightful smile. He looked so irresistibly 
pleasant, in a word, that three or four good- 
humoured fellows said, “Good-morning, sir. A 
Merry Christmas to you!” And Scrooge said 
often afterwards, that of all the blithe sounds he 
had ever heard, those were the blithest in his 
ears. 

He had not gone far, when coming on towards 
him he beheld the portly gentleman who had 
walked into his counting-house the day before and 
said, “Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe?” It sent 
a pang across his heart to think how this old 
gentleman would look upon him when they met; 
but he knew what path lay straight before him, 
and he took it. 

“My dear sir,” said Scrooge, quickening his pace, 
and taking the old gentleman by both his hands. 
“How do you do? I hope you succeeded yester- 
day. It was very kind of you. A Merry 
Christmas to you, sir!” 


125 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“Mr. Scrooge?” 

‘"Yes,” said Scrooge. ‘‘That is my name, and 
I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me 
to ask your pardon. And will you have the good- 
ness ” here Scrooge whispered in his ear. 

“Lord bless me!” cried the gentleman, as if his 
breath were taken away. “My dear Mr. Scrooge, 
are you serious?” 

“If you please,” said Scrooge. “Not a farthing 
less. A great many back-payments are included 
in it, I assure you. Will you do me that 
favour?” 

“My dear sir,” said the other, shaking hands 
with him. “I don’t know what to say to such 
munifi ” 

“Don’t say anything, please,” retorted Scrooge. 
“Come and see me. Will you come and see me?” 

“I will!” cried the old gentleman. And it was 
clear he meant to do it. 

“Thank’ee,” said Scrooge. “I am much obliged 
to you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you!” 

He went to church, and walked about the 
streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, 
and patted children on the head, and questioned 
beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of 
houses, and up to the windows; and found that 
everything could yield him pleasure. He had 
never dreamed that any walk — that anything — 
could give him so much happiness. In the after- 
126 


THE END OF IT 

noon, he turned his steps towards his nephew’s 
house. 

He passed the door a dozen times, before he had 
the courage to go up and knock. But he made a 
dash, and did it. 

“Is your master at home, my dear?” said 
Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl! Very. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Where is he, my love?” said Scrooge. 

“He’s in the dining-room, sir, along with 
mistress. I’ll show you upstairs, if you please.” 

“Thank’ee. He knows me,” said Scrooge, with 
his hand already on the dining-room lock. “I’ll 
go in here, my dear.” 

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round 
the door. They were looking at the table (which 
was spread out in great array); for these young 
housekeepers are always nervous on such points, 
and like to see that everything is right. 

“Fred!” said Scrooge. 

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage 
started! Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, 
about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, 
or he wouldn’t have done it, on any account. 

“Why, bless my soul!” cried Fred, “who’s 
that?” 

“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to 
dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?” 

Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his 

127 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


arm off. He was at home in five minutes. 
Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just 
the same. So did Topper when he came. So did 
the plump sister when she came. So did every one 
when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful 
games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happi- 
ness! 

But he was early at the office next morning. 
Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there 
first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That 
was the thing he had set his heart upon. 

And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck 
nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He 
was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his 
time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that 
he might see him come into the tank. 

His hat was off before he opened the door; his 
comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy;, 
drilling away with his pen, as if he were trying to 
overtake nine o’clock. 

‘‘Hollo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed 
voice, as near as he could feign it. “What do you 
mean by coming here at this time of day?” 

“I am very sorry, sir,” said Bob. “I am behind 
my time.” 

“You are?” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think 
you are. Step this way, sir, if you please.” 

“It’s only once a year, sir,” pleaded Bob, 
appearing from the tank. “It shall not be re- 
128 


THE END OF IT 

peated. I was making rather merry yesterday, 
sir.” 

‘‘Now, ril tell you what, my friend,” said 
Scrooge; “I am not going to stand this sort of 
thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, 
leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a 
dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into 
the tank again — “and therefore I am about to 
raise your salary!” 

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the 
ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking 
Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling 
to the people in the court for help and a strait 
waistcoat. 

“A Merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with 
an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he 
clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, 
Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for 
many a year. I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour 
to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss 
your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas 
bowl of smoking bishop. Bob ! Make up the fires, 
and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot 
another i. Bob Cratchit!” 

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it 
all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who 
did NOT die, he was a second father. He became 
as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a 

129 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


man, as the good old city knew, or any other good 
old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. 
Some people laughed to see the alteration in 
him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; 
for he was wise enough to know that nothing 
ever happened on this globe for good, at which 
some people did not have their fill of laughter in 
the outset; and knowing that such as these would 
be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that 
they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have 
the malady in less attractive forms. His own 
heart laughed; and that was quite enough for him. 

He had no further intercourse with spirits, but 
lived upon the total abstinence principle, ever 
afterwards; and it was always said of him, that 
he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man 
alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly 
said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim 
observed, God bless us every one! 

130 


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